Consider the RV.
If a man’s home is his castle, his Recreational Vehicle is his
battleship
– but the behemoth doesn’t run on magic. It takes a special
person with a sharp, calculating mind, a knack for machines and
more than intuition.
Hollister – Consider the RV.
If a man’s home is his castle, his Recreational Vehicle is his battleship – but the behemoth doesn’t run on magic. It takes a special person with a sharp, calculating mind, a knack for machines and more than intuition.
The best RV technicians spend hours upon hours perfecting their craft, and as of fall 2005, one local man was able to count himself among the best.
Chris Rendon, a Hollister resident for the past 18 years, graduated from the prestigious Camping World RV Institute in Bowling Green, Ky., last November, after nine weeks of grueling study.
As one of the top students in a class of only 22, Rendon is one of the most advanced RV techs in America.
“It was hard to be away from my family for nine weeks,” he said. “But I told myself it was the best thing, I told myself I had to do it.”
Rendon began his career in the RV industry in the late 1980s, shortly after coming to the United States from Mexico. He worked for the now-defunct Shelton Industries, a firm that manufactured RVs.
“In Mexico, I went to one of the best schools in the country,” he said. “I studied hard for years, but when I graduated, there were no career opportunities. So I decided to come to the U.S. to start a better life.”
When Rendon learned that a Camping World RV store was opening in 1992, just a half-hour commute away in San Martin, he applied and reported to work on the first day the store was open.
Originally, Camping World had invited Rendon to attend the Institute, but he turned it down, reluctant to leave his wife and two young daughters for such a lengthy period of time. When the opportunity arose last year, however, he decided to go for it.
“I’m focused right now on keeping customers happy, and they don’t feel secure if they don’t think you have the right certification, even if you’re really good at your job,” he said. “So I knew that this would be good for my customers, good for my job security and good for me personally.”
Camping World bought him a plane ticket to Kentucky and enrolled him in the Institute, where he found himself on the first day of class on Sept. 19.
“Kentucky is a whole different world,” he said. “I’m not used to seeing tornadoes right outside my hotel room.”
For over two months, Rendon was in class five days a week, eight hours a day, learning the finer points of RV installation and repair.
“RVs are really complicated. There’s a generator, a satellite system, a water heater, a furnace, everything,” he said. “You have to know how they work, how to troubleshoot properly, what all the regulations are… every day they’d bring us something to take apart, and we’d learn the names of the parts and put them back together.”
An already challenging curriculum was made more difficult by the fact that Rendon was not a native English-speaker, and was the only Hispanic student at the Institute despite the fact that the student body was made up of people from every state in the nation.
Rendon spent all of his free time on evenings and weekends studying textbooks.
“There’s a lot of weird names and sometimes it was hard for me to remember them,” he said. “I thought it was because my English isn’t so good, but everyone else said they had trouble with it, too, so I felt better.”
Rendon’s hard work paid off. Where many students passed only enough tests to graduate, he excelled, earning “universal accreditation” and graduating among the best in his class.
“It was hard work, but it interested me and that made it fun,” he said. “I’ve been working in this business for a while, but you always have doubts, so being able to look at the book and learn the right way was good.”
When Rendon returned home in November, nobody threw a ticker-tape parade, but co-workers, friends and family alike were proud of his accomplishment.
“I did this to encourage my kids,” he said. “I want them to know that school is good, it gives you a better future and better opportunities. They should see me doing the same thing.”
Rendon plans to put his new accreditation to good use at Camping World and, although he says he frequently receives offers from competitors, he plans to stay there for a long time.
“I really like my job,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many job offers I get, I just want to stay in a place where I’m comfortable and where I like coming into work every day.”
Danielle Smith covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or
ds****@fr***********.com
